[CLUE-Talk] Legal breaking of the MS monopoly WAS: Re:[CLUE-Tech] HP laptop

Thu Jan 17 19:04:37 MST 2002

On 01-16 20:51, Kevin Cullis wrote:
> Sean LeBlanc wrote:
> > 
> > The only real anti-competitive practice (on an OS level) I can think of that
> > affects everyone is the WinModem and WinPrinter, but with proper
> > understanding those can be avoided, and with enough people avoiding those
> > faulty products, there will be a correction as well. I realize hardware
> > vendors do this so they can cut costs on these components, but they need to
> > be clearer about this.
> 
> Just because you can't think of anything, doesn't mean that it's not
> going on and you may not have heard if it came by,

Right you are. I guess I'm just seeking more info...I'm not claiming to be
an authority on the M$/DOJ/States' lawsuit or M$'s past and current
transgressions by any means. Later in the thread, someone mentioned laptops,
and I completely forgot about those - it's nearly impossible to the M$ tax
there, and I failed to account for that. The agreements that were mentioned
were also abhorrent (if you have an issue with a SOFTWARE license, you have
to ship back the HARDWARE??? By that logic, I could ship a DVD with a DVD
player, and put a similar agreement on the DVD player?), so, okay, I'm along
for the ride. :) I'll have to get reading, and write my letter up.  I'll be
eyeing this discussion, too. I still have reservations about the "after
shocks", and I'd like to have some confirmation that it will be limited in
capacity - after all, I work in the software industry, and the less
government meddling, the better. There have been several proposals from
different people about setting up a type of agency to oversee Microsoft or
overseeing the industry as a whole, and that sticks in my craw. I just hope
no one in power takes that to heart.

>  but I, too, believe
> in Libertarian philosophy (even got Ludwig von Mises books to show) to a
> point.  The point with Libertarianians is that they believe EVERYONE is
> good and ALL government is bad whereas the other end of the spectrum is
> the everyone is NOT so good, including businesses but government is
> good. Truth is, it's a little of both. Enron is a perfect example on the
> business side, Communism is on the other.

Again, right you are...although I'd err on the side of Libertarianism. :)
Enron isn't entirely the best of examples, though: from what is emerging it
looks like they have violated laws already on the books. I seriously doubt
any free market could function without those laws. 

BTW - I don't think that Libertarians necessarily believe that all
government is bad and all people are good, I think they just believe that
limited government is best, and that people (adults) know what is best for
themselves. To have NO government would be anarchy, and that's not what
Libertarians have on their agenda. :) 

>  
> > I guess as a Libertarian, I fear that any class action suits being taken (at
> > least on behalf of a federal or state government) against a company amount
> > to little more than extortion in the end, and benefit no one but big
> > government. Take the tobacco settlement. The biggest in history: 200+
> > BILLION. And it turns out that years later, MOST states are spending that
> > money any way BUT towards the original intent of "preventing smoking"...some
> > are using the money to balance their budgets.  What will be the final result
> > of an M$ settlement? A Software Department to "oversee" the industry? That
> > could be disastrous.
> 
> The class action suits are not the problem, but the "what do we do after
> we win" sort of answers and the result that are looked for. Let me give
> you an example.  Not too soon after 9/11 I was watching CSPAN and they
> had a briefing regarding the damage the plane that hit the Pentagon had
> done.  Long story short, the original contract was written to spec and
> amounted to 2500 (or 3500, I forgot) pages long of spec sheets they
> wanted in improving the Pentagon.  Rather than a spec-based contract,
> they rewrote it to a performance-based contact which got it down to less
> than 20 pages.  Result: the 9/11 plane had a direct hit on the newly
> completed section of the Pentagon and they were calculating that if the
> plane had hit an older section that the damage and death toll would have
> been MUCH higher. They had pictures of the windows of the new section
> compared with the older section a few hundred yards away: the new
> windows just a few yards were NOT blown out and the older windows a few
> HUNDRED yards away WERE blown out.
> 
> Needless to say, I'm all for performance based results and both
> government AND business have done bad as well as good, but I do prefer
> smaller governments.  Did you know that out of 133,000 companies in
> Colorado, only 269 have greater than 500 employees! (2500 have 100-500
> employees, 17,000 have 20-99, and 114,000 have less than 20 employees) 
> The state of Colorado has, I hope I'm not mistaken, about 30,000
> employees. Do you see a problem with these numbers?

You mean as far as correctness?  IIRC, nationwide, small businesses account
for over a third of employment? As for 30K employees, did you mean state
government employees?

> Man can do evil or good either in business or in government and we need
> both, now it becomes a matter of how much of each.

I agree - but under most circumstances, the relationship you enter into with
a company is entirely voluntary. That is not the case with government. 

I saw someone else in this thread mention that overhauling IP law may be the
ticket, and I'd agree. Maybe that should be overhauled, and we just proceed
to enforcing the resulting IP law. Of course, the devil is in the details...

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at attbi.com Yahoo:seanleblancathome 
ICQ:138565743 MSN:seanleblancathome AIM:sleblancathome 
Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, 
and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has. 
-Randolph Bourne, "Youth and Life" 

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Subject: [CLUE-Talk] Microsoft now "owns" OpenGL
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/23708.html

Not sure if the quotes on "owns" are appropriate or not.

I also wonder how much longer http://nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=linux and
ftp://ftp.nvidia.com/pub/drivers/english/XFree86_40 will continue to be
available.

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